Romar could tweak starting lineup

Hoops coach Lorenzo Romar said there could be one or two changes in his starting lineup when UW meets Syracuse at 1:30 p.m. Friday in the NIT consolation game. He said he hadn't decided yet and didn't share what he is considering.

A few other highlights from our post-practice briefing this morning:

The Huskies Thanksgiving in New York consisted of a morning practice, brunch, a little Macy's parade watching, a film session, and maybe a movie tonight.

Andrian Oliver's knee is bothering him, which accounts in part for his brief five-minute appearance Wednesday.

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Romar said foul trouble was the only thing that limited Quincy Pondexter to 10 minutes, although he acknowledged that the sophomore wing "hasn't had the start he would like."

Romar said that freshman point guard Venoy Overton "was outstanding at times … when he's on the floor, offensively he makes us a better team."

UW radio voice Bob Rondeau flew back to Seattle to work the Apple Cup on Saturday. Play-by-play of the Syracuse game will be handled by KJR's Mike Gastineau.

Some Syracuse notes:

Syracuse has made the NCAA tournament in 25 of its 31 seasons under coach Jim Boeheim and won the 2002-03 national title. … Syracuse freshman guard Jonny Flynn played under Romar on the USA U-19 team a couple of summers ago. Romar said he was impressed with Flynn's leadership, distributing and his ability to score if needed. "I think you take him off their team right now, they drop way off," Romar said. .… Syracuse was bumped into the consolation game with its first loss of the season Wednesday, 79-65, to Ohio State. F Donte Greene led Syracuse with 21 points, while Harris had a game-high 12 rebounds.

Some hoops quotes

ROMAR on Quincy Pondexter: "Right now he hasn't had the start he would like. … We're just trying to get him comfortable to where he can just go out and play. Right now, he's not playing, he's thinking too much."

ROMAR on the loss to Texas A&M: "We made some critical mistakes on both ends – defensively and offensively. We did not do a good job of boxing them out. But we did a lot of good things. I thought what we did for a half, wasn't something that we could just fake. I thought we did a lot of good things for a half."

ROMAR on teams trying to take away Jon Brockman:

Teams will try to take Jon out of the game. If we were playing against us, that's what we would do. Last night, we went away from Jon. You can blame me for that a little bit. I thought if Joe Wolfinger hit a couple of shots we could stretch their defense because they were concentrating on Jon so much. If those shots go in, it makes a huge difference, I think. But they didn't. Jon was so effective, we probably should have continued to use him. ... When a guy is being as effective as he is, I don't think we play through him less. I just think we need some other guys to step up and help him."

ROMAR on his team's 2-for-13 three-point shooting: "When Ryan (Appleby) comes back, it makes a difference. And Joe (Wolfinger) been shooting the ball real well from 3-point distance as well. That's enough out on the floor to keep a team honest."

ROMAR on the Syracuse zone: "We talked more about being able to attack the zone and working on it. We did not say, 'OK we must make threes tonight.' I think when you attack a zone and say OK we've got to shoot threes you are setting yourself up for failure. Against a zone, you've got to make it inside out: You've got to get the ball in the middle of the zone and play through that. You've got to be able to attack the zone to get your misses. ... Obviously if we would have had guys in there knocking threes down that would have helped our cause. But at the same time, in the first half when we were playing efficient basketball, we were playing inside out and we were shooting over 50 percent."

ROMAR on A&M dominating UW on the boards: "Right now Jon is carrying too much of the rebounding load. We almost play a little bit like Jon is going to get it so we don't go as hard. We all have to attack the glass. Jon is averaging over 12 rebounds a game. We need to have a couple of other guys averaging six, seven, eight rebounds a game as well. And it's possible, I've seen it done before."